Fire hits East Side Apartment Complex

Fire destroyed or damaged 20 apartments in the Shiloh Place Apartments, 1156 Shiloh Square, on Evansville's East side early Sunday morning. Firefighters were called to the scene at 6:25 Sunday morning and were dousing flames an hour and a half later. There were no reports of injuries and all residents made it out of the fire safely, although many lost all of their possessions.

Tyler Shaw woke up Sunday morning to the smell of smoke.

"I had smelled it before, because when you turn your furnace on this time of year, it kind of smells like that. I wasn't too alarmed," said the University of Evansville senior.

Then he said, he heard a clicking and popping noise and thought something wasn't right.

"I turned off the lights and looked to see if there were lights coming from somewhere or a fire," he said. "I looked at my bathroom where the furnace was and I could see light coming from the door.

"There was a flame going around my exhaust stack from the furnace to the ceiling. It was up to the ceiling." When he saw that he grabbed his phone and called 911. Shaw was told a call had already been placed and firefighters were on the way.

The Evansville Fire Department responded to the blaze in one of the buildings at Shiloh Place Apartments, off Washington Avenue two blocks west of Green River Road, shortly after 6:30 a.m.

By the time the fire was contained several hours later, 16 of the building¹s 32 units were damaged. The rest of the 16 units had a smoke odor in them, said fire investigator Jesse Story.

There were no injuries, but one firefighter was taken to the hospital with a dislocated elbow.

Shaw said after he called 911 he tried to stay calm and think of the most valuable things to grab his books, computer and wallet.

As he was leaving, firefighters were coming in, and Shaw had just a moment to show them the flames in his bathroom.

"I just couldn't believe this was happening to me," he said.

Evansville Fire District Chief Bruce Woodward said the fire is still under investigation, but initial reports showed the cause to be electrical.

Woodward said they do not know if the fire started in Shaw's apartment and are still investigating the initial location.

The fire extended into the attic of the building, which allowed for it to travel, he said.

The complex is made up of several two-story buildings with 32 apartments apiece.

There are 152 units total in the complex.

Firefighters did have some trouble putting the fire out, but eventually were able to extinguish it.

"There are numerous voids behind the walls that would allow for a fire to travel," Woodward said. "Once we got the fire to vent through the roof, isolate the fire, we were able to stop it from its progression." All the fire departments on Evansville's East Side were called to assist, and because it was shortly before a shift change, members from the second shift aided. They worked for several hours to extinguish the blaze.

Evansville Red Cross spokeswoman Candi Croft said the agency handled 10 cases of families or indivuals who were provided clothing or incidental items. Croft said the Red Cross expected to house ³two or three² families in a shelter at its Stockwell Road headquarters Sunday night.

Residents said they were thankful to the firefighters who helped extinguish the blaze and get people out of their homes safely.

Richard Childers, 41, was one of those.

Childers, who's been at the complex since April, lives in a back apartment on the second floor. As he quickly dressed before evacuating, firefighters took his miniature schnauzer, Buster, to safety.

"All I saw was billowing black smoke at first," Childers said. "I didn't know what was going on." As he walked out of the apartment building, he said, he saw the roof of the second building collapse.

"That's basically when I knew this was going to be real bad," he said.

Childers may have been one of the luckier residents. Only his bedroom wall was effected by the fire, and, he said, as firefighters worked to distinguish the blaze, they moved his valuables to the side.

Included were photographs of his grandparents and momentos he has of his father, who was a veteran.

Several hours later, Childers was allowed to briefly return to his apartment and get some essentials, such as his medication.

While the main areas of his apartment were unaffected, his bedroom suffered the most damage.

"The walls of my bedroom they had to rip out, so that's all over my bedroom," he said. "A lot of carnage. That's the word I'd use. It's like a bomb went off. It doesn't look the way it did when I went out, basically." Karon Davids has lived at Shiloh for the last four years.

After coming home from working the second shift at Ameriqual, she was trying to get to sleep when a neighbor's beagle began barking and she heard people talking in the hallway.

"So I got out of bed and went to the door and looked out, and all I could see was blazes coming out of the apartments," she said. "I grabbed my jacket real fast and had my pair of socks on and that was it. That's something that always terrified me was fires." As she walked out, she said, there was smoke everywhere.

As firefighters worked the fire, she and other residents waited for word on what to do next.

"It was unreal," Davids said. "It's hard to explain. Just waiting to see. At least we're all here. Things can be replaced."